There are 6 Elites choices in a Battalion detachment

This changes everything! I had it in my head that the Battalion was just the old Standard Force Organisation Chart with an extra HQ slot.

Well, this makes army selection a little easier, doesn't it? My only real complaint about eighth edition was the sudden proliferation of buff characters competing for my Elites slots. The Noxious Blightbringer springs to mine or all those mini-characters who used to be mere components of the Space Marine Command Squad who are now independent characters in their own right.

Honestly, I am really glad this is a thing. One of the best things eighth edition Fantasy did was increase the Special Choice limit to 50% of your army. Generally speaking most of the big theme units are in the Special choices. Usually this means units that are from somewhere like Swordmasters of Hoeth or units that represent a specific sub-faction like Plague Monks.

This is less the case with 40k but Elite choices tend to be where the specialists live whilst your Troops choices tend towards generalism (unless the army itself tends towards a specialism). For one thing I imagine Eldar players are happy for the chance to take a wider selection of Aspect Warriors. For my part there are so many cool Elites choices available to my Death Guard and Black Templars that I'm glad I no longer have to skimp on the cool stuff.

Hey, everyone likes more cake. 

Detachment Issues (8th edition force org charts)

Just to be clear: as I queue this post these images are still “leaks” and thus rumours. They look legit but we've all been bitten before. That said, let's talk crunch!

Now, I hate the standard force organisation chart with a fiery passion. It doesn't work for me. I know what its meant to do. Its to provide balance by restricting every player to the same basic menu of unit types which isn't a bad design philosophy but it can be a little limiting that, say, no matter the context or importance of a mission your army isn't going to commit more than three units of elite troops to it under any circumstances.

This isn't to say the standard force org is going away but it is getting more versatile. For one thing, the “standard” version lives in a tiered system...

So, different sizes of chart for different sizes of game, I can get down with that. I also like that you get more Elites with six slots in the normal-sized game Battalion Detachment, a move that reminds me of Fantasy going to maximum 50% Special choices. I imagine that some of the more powerful Troops choices will find themselves bumped up to Elite status to compensate but I can appreciate the opportunities for army theming this represents. We also get an extra HQ slot (two of the three being compulsory), which is no bad thing since most armies now have so many HQ options that just two and only two was starting to feel very restricting.

Flyers are now part of the standard force organisation as their own discrete entity, which is nice.

The flipside of this trend seems to be raising the compulsory Troops choices from two to three which might seem unfair except for the fact that there are now force orgs that don't require troops at all.

So, basically, one themed chart for each of the other choices: Vanguard for compulsory Elites, Spearhead for compulsory Heavy Support and Outrider for compulsory Fast Attack. Each has Troops at 0-3 and the other choices at 0-2. These measures and dropping the HQ slots down to two again gives these charts a significant downside to the Battalion. These are charts for a more strict theming than the three-tiered standard and I like that. My mind is already brimming with ideas for a Flesh Tearers Outrider Detachment (all the Assault Marines...).

And then there's a page of various housekeeping exercises: flyer, fortification and super-heavy detachments that presumably slot along the side of a main army plus an HQ themed chart which seems designed for campaign theming and the like when you want the big boss man / woman / alien / robot / daemon present for a special game with his own cadre of hangers on and a big thing.

All in all, yet more reason to look forward to a very versatile edition of the rules, me thinks. 

Why 40k needs a General's Handbook

This week on "A Man And His Dog"...

Okay, so one thing before we start: this whole chain of logic is based on the idea going round that a General's Handbook 2^nd edition is coming sometime this summer. The whole idea I'm about to lay out pretty much relies on the idea that the Handbook is going to become an annual-ish release.

That said, let's talk about the single greatest gift to game balancing GW has ever created.

Let's look at the customer experience of buying a Codex. You buy your Codex, which in itself is £25 or £30 on top of the cost of the main rulebook, the miniatures, glues and paints and such. You can't really cut down that list much except in terms of the books and the most expendable of the two books is the Codex.

Add to that the fact that every edition is basically honour bound at this point to produce a new Codex for every major army with a few small timers getting a book every other edition.

So every edition you're in for an instant cost of the main rulebook/starter set and sooner or later you're expected to fork over another £30 just to keep using your army in most settings. Yes, there are places you could play older versions of the rules but most gaming clubs, certainly the most accessible ones that GW runs on its own premises, is going to insist on current rules so everyone is playing the same meta.

So let's talk about limiting that cost and doing a favour to game balance at the same time.

In AoS, buying a Battletome is an incentivised purchase. Yes, there's stuff in any given Battletome that isn't available for free: Warscroll Battlions, Allegiance rules and Battle Plans for the rules side, background sections for the fluff side. Essentially, though, those are all add ons as full rules of every unit and characters, aside from points cost in Matched Play, is available for free download.

Because the points costs are available in a seperate (and relatively cheap) book, I don't think we'll see a second edition of most Battletomes any time soon. Oh, Stormcast Eternals will definitely get their fourth book, fat golden poster children that they are, and maybe some other housekeeping exercises like smooshing Khorne Bloodbound and Khorne Daemons together to match Disciples of Tzeentch's formatting. However, I don't think a new Ironjawz or Flesh Eater Courts books is on the horizon.

Because there's very little reason to create it, let alone ask for the player for fork over the cast. If GW has a sudden inspiration to add a unit to, say, Clan Pestilens they can just release the free PDF and lay out its background in White Dwarf. They give it a provisional points cost on the Battlescroll and codify it when the next General's Handbook comes out. This way new model releases don't have to be tied to book releases.

And what's more, as points costs are the main game balancing strategy of these games, if they can be updated once a year that gives GW a lot more chance to both shake up and rationalise their meta.

There was a problem once where Space Marine tanks were massively over-pointed for what they did and the rules designers committed to lowering the points cost in new Codexes. However, for some Space Marine factions this took years because they had to wait their turn and so you had one army spending peanuts on their Razorbacks and Predators whilst others were paying through the nose for them. Instant imbalance and a years long wait to see it fixed.

With a General's Handbook it could have been done in one release.

Honestly, this is all motivated by the fact I've been playing this old game for four editions now, soon to be five, and one version of Codex: Space Marines doesn't read much different from any other. Maybe its time to just release one version of the thing and let it sit, a background resource supplemented by PDF downloads and whatever campaign book system rises from the ashes of The Gathering Storm. I also think it would be of benefit to GW to de-empahsise buying books over miniatures, especially with how short these editions are getting.